The Idaho Mountain Express announced that the ambitious former EIC of Marvel from 2001 to 2011 is opening his own publishing company just to the northwest:
…Former Marvel Comics CEO Joe Quesada announced Friday, July 26, at the San Diego Comic Convention that he will launch Amazing Comics Co. out of Sun Valley.
(…) Quesada is a comic book artist and writer who recently retired from his position as Chief Creative Officer at Marvel Entertainment. The late Stan Lee was Quesada’s mentorand it was With Quesada’s help, the comic book empire was saved from bankruptcy in the early 2000s and developed into what we know today.
Seriously, Stan the Man was this charlatan’s mentor? When you remember that Quesada may have once said in an interview in the early 2000s that he thought Stan’s marriage of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson in 1987 was “wrong,” it’s awfully hard to swallow the claim that Marvel’s most famous employee ever was his mentor. Also, Stan may have been a writer, but Quesada was an artist, and a very mediocre one at that. He obviously failed to get a job as an editor at Marvel over a quarter of a century ago.
Oddly enough, they fail to mention that Bill Jemas was also instrumental in rescuing Marvel from bankruptcy, only to then impose his own form of PC and other terrible ideas on them before leaving management in the mid-2000s and also since then starting his own company, AWA, with Axel Alonso. Anyone who realizes the damage they’ve done to Marvel over the last decade would do well not to buy from them as much as Quesada’s new venture.
At Marvel, Quesada created the “Marvel Knights” with characters such as Black Panther, Black Widow and Daredevil. He also worked on storylines for Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Guardians of the Galaxy, some of the company’s highest-grossing films..
Quesada was crucial in developing the story of Miles Morales, a black and Latino teenager who becomes Spider-Man after the death of Peter ParkerThe film “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Man Universe,” in which Morales plays the main character, won an Oscar for best animated film in 2019.
“Ultimately, it’s about Develop your imagination”, said Quesada. “Just like at Marvel, I want fans to know that they are important to the creation of the stories because they determine what we do.”
Well, when he used his imagination, he certainly did so in the worst possible way, producing some of the worst stories of the time, including – but not limited to – Spider-Man. As their editor, he also oversaw Avengers: Disassembledwritten by the highly overrated Brian Bendis, another bad story they never recovered from, and despite the gross mishandling of Scarlet Witch, the plot served as the basis for a recent TV show and movie, WandaVision and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. It’s embarrassing that it had to be this way, but it exposes the hypocrisy that Hollywood displays in regards to the treatment of women there.
This is also the only mention of anything Spider-related here (with the Ultimate line oddly omitted, making the statement about Peter confusing), as the paper clearly saw no need to call out Quesada over one of the worst storylines he commissioned as EIC, namely One More Day, and the selling out of the Spider-marriage to Mephisto for shock value. No wonder this fiasco can never be undone, any more than the damage Dan DiDio did to DC when he was their EIC.
The first comic storyline Quesada worked on is “Disciple,” a prequel story to William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”
“When Shakespeare’s story begins, Hamlet is already an adult,” Quesada said. “We’re telling a sort of modern backstory. It was written by Charles Dorfman and myself.”
And we don’t have to waste money on it. Even Quesada’s previous work as an editor was riddled with political correctness, so why should we expect it to be much different here? It would be better to stick with the original Shakespeare story instead.
Quesada said the company will release more titles in the coming months, but he wants to move the releases forward slowly. to make them special and to keep the readers excited because the news is devoured so quicklyHe works with the Florida publisher Mad Cave Studios and the Belgian publisher Dupuis.
“The goal is Build it up and expand it slowlyand of course we want to have stories that take place here in Idaho,” Quesada said. “We already work with artists and writers from all over the world.”
Oh, I’ve heard that before. But they haven’t done that at Marvel, having soon returned to company-wide crossovers following Jemas’s departure from the executive ranks. There’s nothing special about Quesada’s portfolio, and no one should have to worry about anything coming from someone as cynical as Quesada has been since becoming Marvel’s EIC.
“I’m really surprised no one has thought of this before, but I’m excited to finally make that big reveal and see what happens. My goal is not to compete with Marvel or any of the other major comic labels, just to create great stories and characters.”, said Quesada.
And even that can’t be taken at face value. Besides, if I remember correctly, didn’t he and Jemas undermine Crossgen’s business back then? It was embarrassing how they later became part of the same company when both were later bought by Disney, considering how much damage Quesada and Jemas did 20 years ago. That’s not to say CG’s late owner Mark Alessi didn’t make terrible mistakes when he ran them. But the way Quesada/Jemas conducted themselves was nothing short of embarrassing, and they are not qualified to work in the industry.
I will not be buying into Quesada’s new project any more than I will Jemas or even Frank Miller Presents since the founder hired DiDio as editor. What are these destroyers of Marvel/DC coherence doing in this medium? They were unqualified to begin with and the mainstream media’s whitewashing of all their worst mistakes is just appalling.
Originally published here.
